A fixture on The Paul Daniels Show and countless ’80s variety spectaculars, nutzoid German escapologist and illusionist Hans Moretti was a name to conjure with for over a decade. Unforgettably resembling a Victorian circus strongman with bald pate, walrus tache and stocky build, Moretti combined painstakingly perfected takes on classic magic routines with a winningly boobish presentation style, helped immeasurably by his wife-cum-assistant Helga, glitzily attired as a cross between Sonia off of Fresh Fields and Dame Hilda Bracket. The merry pair would romp through various tricks from the accomplished-yet-silly – a mad escape from a battered cardboard box, and the gravity-defying suspension of Helga on two of those ‘trees’ you make out of rolled-up newspapers – to the accomplished-and-serious-yet-somehow-also-a-bit-silly, including many a variant on the bullet-in-the-teeth/Russian-roulette chestnut (basically anything that allowed Helga to fire revolvers, rifles or crossbows at her hubby’s shiny head). Mad, good and very, very dangerous.
Richard Davies
December 24, 2010 at 6:09 pm
Wasn’t he once the Eurovision interval act, & nearly shot himself in the head with a crossbow linked to a Heath Robinson lash up of crossbows firing at each other, or was that someone else?
Applemask
June 19, 2013 at 1:55 pm
Died a few months ago at the age of 84.
George White
January 9, 2016 at 11:34 am
The Eurovision act was someone else, ripping the trick off from Hans though.